100 Books Like The Book and the Sword

I am a great fan of the sensational xianxia drama The Untamed, which is why I love this novel from which the drama is adapted.

One thing that I really like about the novel is the character Wen Qing. My heart is captured by her quiet ways of going about her practice of medicine, her deep but understated affection for her brother Wen Ning, and her unwavering loyalty to her good friend Wei Wuxian after facing adversities together with him. She actually saves him twice, the second time with her own life.

What also strikes me as outstanding is the way the novel constantly asks the thought-provoking questions: what is good and what is evil, and why are unorthodox ways deemed as evil?   

The carefree Lotus Huang comes into her own in this volume as she charms her way with wiles through problems and obstacles she and Guo Jing encounter as a couple, including two girls to whom Guo Jing is betrothed against his will. She is not as frivolous as she appears, and she always watches bumbling Guo Jing’s back.

This is the second English volume in Legends of the Condor Heroes, which is a popular novel by Jin Yong that I had read in Chinese as a child and which I recently re-read and still loved. I picked out this volume mainly because I adored the translation of one poetic passage describing the hallucinating “Ode to the Billowing Tide” flute melody played by Apothecary Huang. 

I’m most impressed by the fact that the author, a white American, did meticulous research into Chinese mythology and Daoist practices. The kungfu fight scenes are also arresting.   

Xian Li-Lin, a plucky Daoist priestess with superior martial arts skills who is bent on forging her own way in a male-dominated world of 19th century San Francisco Chinatown, charmed me from the start of the novel (which is a sequel but can be read as a standalone). Beset with personal challenges as a lonely Chinese widow with a harsh father, she still takes it upon herself to fend helpless immigrants from the perils of ghosts, evil spirits, and gangsters.

The grumpy, shrewd, and open-minded Ling Taishi, the mentor of the spoiled hero Jian, certainly steals the spotlight in this novel. The initial uncomfortable master-apprentice relationship gradually turns into a warm and lasting bond as the two face a world of danger, assassins, and revolution together.

The badass image of this older war artist is quite striking, while the other two female leads (one is an idealistic revolutionary and the other a brutal assassin) are also nicely fleshed out in their respective separate plotlines. The martial arts action scenes are cinematic and well-written.

Drawing from her work as a journalist, Chen gives us unsettling stories crystallized by the ferocious competition that engulfs everyone in the vast anonymous landscape that is contemporary China. The endless micro-struggles of small-town individuals to escape poverty or gain an educational foothold reveal their warped understanding of society and life. Mindless mishaps, fears, and even cruelty are everyday experiences of people struggling to survive and protect their families. The great hidden human costs of China's rise are simply mind-boggling. 

I really enjoy moving through history in the context of the lives of women. Leap forward several centuries from the Ming Dynasty and women in China are still limited by tradition and binding their feet. Peony loves, and her love is returned by David ben Ezra, the son of a wealthy Jewish merchant. But Peony is a bondswoman, and while David struggles with the decision to marry his mother’s Jewish choice of bride or the beautiful Kueilan, she must observe from afar.

I loved how this book vividly illustrated, through the course of Peony’s life, how the blending and integration of Chinese and Jewish cultures led to the assimilation of the Kaifeng Jews. Peony embodies the shared respect and understanding between the communities. At the conclusion of the novel, Peony is an elderly Buddhist nun. Her end of life reflections indicate a keen awareness of what the blending of the… show more.

I was totally engrossed in this story about brave, intelligent women in 15th-century China. Yuxian is trained to be a doctor by her grandmother within the constraints of traditional Chinese society. I was amazed by her ability to see past obstacles and challenges. I found myself holding my breath as she was confronted with unbelievable scenarios.

Like Yunxian herself, every woman in her circle, especially her lifelong friend Meiling, finds ways to rise to a higher plane within the limitations of arranged marriages and class prohibitions. Through friendship and purpose, this woman of the Ming dynasty left a remarkable legacy for generations to come.

This novel broke my heart so many times. It did so with beautiful and subtle prose, with its astonishing depiction of tragedy and loss, and with its magical insistence that the music we make can outlive us all. But what broke my heart the most in Thien’s novel is the reminder, or perhaps the revelation, of how much art’s existence depends on an unpredictable, ever-shifting, uncaring, brutal world.

It was staggering, watching generations of a family of musicians fight through a century of political turmoil in China and not knowing if they, and the music, would survive. But I loved it. This novel is a marvel.

The first of Qiu Xiaolong’s Inspector Chen series is just a great story. One reason I read is to explore places, and one place I’m always happy to return to is Shanghai.

This book contains events and characters that can only be found in China, and yet the story itself is pure genre, a police procedural centered on a detective who really wishes he were a poet. 

Without the setting, it’s a great read. With the setting, it’s a chance to explore China.

Probably the most astonishing book I’ve read in the last five years. Imagine every dramatic extreme you ever thought you wanted in a novel—love, intrigue, brutality, violence, scenes as sweet as candy, spectacular magic, cataclysmic struggles, good and evil writ large across the sky... Then imagine that they were all packed into the same novel and that novel was so hilarious that you laughed out loud, so profound that you quoted it unintentionally, so heartbreaking you had to actually read through tears. Compulsively readable with characters that readers love, hate, hate to love and love to hate. It gave me a book hangover that still hasn’t gone away six months later. I routinely force my friends to read the first few pages of this story—one time I even paid someone five bucks just to try it. It’s that good. An official English translation will be available Fall 2022

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